LOT’S WIFE AND SHIRTTAIL HENRY
THE papers had been signed. Andy Jerome and Dr. Inman Shonto had wired
to Los Angeles to explain that they probably would not be home for a
month. Smith Morley’s wife had arrived in San Francisco, since the
adventurers’ trip to the city had necessitated a change in their route
to the Shinbone Country. Several days were spent in outfitting the
expedition. And just a week after Dr. Shonto had told Charmian Reemy of
the prospectors they set off early in the morning, with Charmian, Andy,
and Mr. and Mrs. Morley in the leading car.
Two days later, having driven leisurely and stopped at hotels en
route, they negotiated a steep, wooded pass and saw the yellow desert
stretched out before them, three thousand feet above the sea. Across
it continued the road, straight as a carpenter’s chalk-line, until it
contracted to a pinpoint in the hazy distance and disappeared with the
curvature of the earth.
The big cars wallowed into the sandy ruts and continued on. Weird
growths were on either side of the road--great flat-palmed cacti,
whispering yucca palms, scattering greasewood bushes. The wind was
strong, and the sand was driven into the travellers’ faces in waves.
Now and then the cars crossed dry lakes, which, before they reached
them, had looked deceptively wet. These were smooth, like hardened
plaster of Paris, except that now and then the mud, in drying, had
cracked and peeled, leaving a sea of shards that extended for many
miles. Nothing at all grew on the dark surface of these dry lakes.
In the dim distance a hazy line of calico buttes appeared after an hour
of fast travel over the desert. As the machines neared them a long line
of mountains showed behind the buttes, and the uninitiated of the party
were told that between the buttes and the range of wooded mountains lay
another stretch of desert as barren as the one they then were crossing.
The buttes marked the beginning of the Shinbone Country, which extended
into the higher altitudes. In the buttes were the opal claims.
They came to an oasis, green with alfalfa. Here for forty years a
family had lived because of the artesian water that spurted up from the
level land. The cottonwood trees, though they had shed their leaves for
the coming winter, looked inviting to the sand-blistered pilgrims. The
place was called Diamond H Ranch, and the owner herded his cattle on
the desert during winter months, when bunchgrass grew, and drove them
to the distant mountains for the summer grazing.
Not until they reached the ranch did Smith Morley inform his
prospective buyers that here their journey by automobile would end.
There was a huge stable, and in it there was plenty of room to store
the cars. Also, Morley told them, they would meet with no difficulty
in buying or hiring saddle horses and pack animals from the ranchman.
Furthermore, he conducted a tiny store in connection with his ranch,
and if it should become necessary to do so, they could return to the
ranch at any time and purchase such staple articles of food as might be
needed.
Roger Furlong was the rancher’s name. He and his family made the guests
welcome and treated them hospitably. The afternoon was spent in the
selection of saddle stock, and the rancher’s boy was sent scouring the
desert for a herd of burros, which were at large and living off the
sage. It was late in the afternoon before the herd was rounded up and
driven in to the corrals. Here Furlong picked out twelve animals that
were old-time packers. The outfit’s supplies and paraphernalia were
transferred from the tonneaus and running-boards of the machines to the
pack-bags. When darkness came everything was ready for an early start
for the calico buttes the following morning.
All of which caused Mary Temple to register a look of high disapproval.
Mary had roughed it considerably in Alaska, so the trip in the saddle
had no terrors for her. Neither did she shrink from their proposed
sojourn in a wild, waterless, and unfriendly country. But she was
amazed and resentful over the whole proceedings.
In San Francisco, while they were outfitting, she had done her utmost
to dissuade Charmian from continuing her erratic undertaking. But that
young lady had a mind of her own and was not to be led astray from her
life’s great adventure. Every plan for preventing her from going having
failed, Mary had recourse to a recital of what Madame Destrehan’s
second sight had revealed to her. At this Charmian had scoffed
disdainfully and laughed hilariously, for Charmian was well aware
that Mary often consulted people who claimed to have occult powers.
So Mary perforce carried out her original intention and made one of
the party, for only death could separate her from Charmian Reemy. But
as preparations for the final lap of their journey went forward she
continued to glare her displeasure and to shake her greying head with
misgivings.
They left Diamond H Ranch at sunup next morning, driving the laden
burros ahead of them. Their course took them at right angles to
the road over which they had reached the oasis, and extended in a
northeasterly direction through the trackless sage and greasewood.
The sand grew heavier as they progressed. The wind came up and drove
clouds of it into their faces, sometimes with stinging force. Laden
with alkali as it was, their lips and eyelids soon began to swell, and
their throats grew parched. They drank heavily of the water in the
desert bags on the burros’ backs, for Morley assured the party that
there would probably be sufficient water near the claims at that time
of year. There was an intermittent spring in the buttes, he explained,
that went dry during the hot months through evaporation. But with
the approach of winter, even though no rain had fallen, the water
rose again in the spring because the evaporation was lessened by the
coolness in the air.
They camped at noon, halfway to the buttes. The morning had been cool
and bracing, and the temperature of the noontide was moderate. Morley
informed the newcomers that in less than a month the weather would be
cool enough to suit any of them, and that snow, even, might sweep down
from the mountains and lie on the ground for several hours.
It was a long, hard trip, for none of them, with the exception of
the young widow, had been in the saddle to any great extent for many
months. Charmian rode just behind the waddling burros, with Andy at her
side. Shonto rode beside Mary Temple, who for the most part made an
uncommunicative companion. The prospectors rode with Morley’s wife in
the rear, and the trio had very little to say to the others.
Dr. Shonto watched Andy and Charmian and could not help but admire
them. Physically they were well suited to each other, and both were
young and handsome. Since their first meeting Shonto had taken note
of the gradual drawing together of the two. He realized that, on the
surface of things, this was as it should be. They were equals socially
and intellectually, and few there were who would not have called it a
fine match.
Still, Dr. Shonto knew in his heart that he could not allow this thing
to go on and culminate in the age-old life partnership between man and
woman. He sincerely believed that he himself was the man for Charmian
Reemy. Never before had he met a woman who appealed to him as she did,
both physically and mentally. Despite the difference in their ages, he
felt that he, rather than Andy, was the one to satisfy her and round
out her life to a point as near completeness as humanity can achieve.
She was far older than Andy mentally. Andy was only a strong, handsome
boy. He--the doctor--was a man of experience, of achievement, of broad
ideals. But all that aside, Dr. Shonto knew that he was falling in
love with Charmian, and that, if necessary, he would sacrifice Andy’s
friendship to win her. For love is primitive; and when a man of the
doctor’s age and experience falls in love for the first time he makes
a rival that will brook no interference. In shorter phraseology, the
doctor wanted this girl--and he meant to have her.
As the long evening shadows crawled over the yucca- and cactus-studded
wastes the party entered the buttes. Here they found relief from
the monotonous desolation they had left, for huge rocks squatted on
either side of their course, and the yuccas were larger and seemed
more friendly. The buttes themselves showed a variety to which the
level land could not lay claim, and here and there was a juniper tree,
alone and unwatered, but displaying a greenery that made it in a way
companionable.
Darkness had overtaken them when Smith Morley called a halt. They were
far within the chain of buttes, in an enfilade with walls of stone
towering high above them on either side. They had reached the spring,
and, after an examination of it, the prospector made the welcome
announcement that there was considerable water in the natural stone
basin beneath the drip. For some time, however, the water supply would
be short, and it would possibly prove necessary to take the saddle
horses into the mountains, the foothills of which were about five miles
distant, and leave them there in a certain well-watered meadow of
which the opal miners knew. The burros, camel-like, could live on very
little water; and the spring perhaps would drip enough for them and the
domestic use of the party. The claims were two miles farther on, in the
direction of the mountains.
They pitched camp at once. Leach and Mrs. Morley went on a search for
petrified yucca with which to build a fire. The others unpacked the
burros, hobbled the horses, and pitched the tents.
Mary Temple, because of her superior culinary knowledge--which no one
disputed--constituted herself camp cook; and the first thing she had
not condemned since leaving El Trono de Tolerancia was the excellent
fire that the petrified yucca made. Her appetizing supper was ready
before the last tent had been pitched, and they all gathered around it
under the cold desert stars and ate as enjoyably as their cracked and
swollen lips would permit.
All were excessively weary, and, though the meal revived their spirits
in a measure, no one would have been averse to seeking his roll of
blankets at an early hour. This, however, was forestalled by the sound
of a voice that came suddenly from the night about them--a strange,
cracked voice that startled them.
“Hello!” it said. “I hope and trust ye ain’t used up all the water in
the spring, ’cause I ain’t had a drop since noon, an’ Lot’s Wife ain’t
had none since yistiddy mornin’.”
Omar Leach, who was reclining on one elbow placidly smoking a short
briar pipe, flipped himself to a sitting posture and stared at Morley.
Morley’s face twitched, and his close-set eyes seemed to narrow
perceptibly as he gazed back at his partner.
Then Leach gave himself another flip and was on his feet. “Get outa
here!” he bawled. “Go on home, and you’ll find plenty of water. We’re
tired and want to go to bed and can’t be bothered with you.”
“Oh, it’s you, is it, Omar?” called the voice. “An’ ye’d send me on to
the mountains without a drink, would ye? It’s like ye, by gum! Well,
I’m comin’ in for water for me an’ Lot’s Wife. Maybe the rest o’ yer
gang ain’t so all-fired selfish. C’m’ere, ye pillar o’ salt! Wait a
min-ut, can’t ye!”
This last apparently was addressed to Lot’s Wife, who, when she dashed
into camp and buried her muzzle in the spring basin, proved to be a
slant-eared, knock-kneed female burro as shaggy as the trunk of a
shell-bark hickory. After her plodded a man, who had lost his hold on
her lead-rope.
Smith Morley darted toward the burro and gave her a kick in the belly
that brought a grunt of pain from her. He drew back his leg for
another, but found himself facing Charmian Reemy’s flashing eyes.
“You kick that burro again,” she said, “and I start for home to-morrow
morning. So that’s the kind of man you are, is it? You would keep a
fellow traveller in this forsaken land and his burro from drinking
water, would you? Well, Mr. Morley, I don’t know whether it is safe to
trust in a business deal a man who has such selfishness in his heart as
you have shown. I may decide to go back anyway.”
Smith Morley looked foolish and embarrassed.
“But you don’t understand, Mrs. Reemy,” he defended himself. “This
water is mighty precious. We’ll have to let it drip twelve hours to
get enough for ourselves and the pack animals for a day; and I can
see right now that the horses will have to go to the mountains in the
morning. And this fellow here--I know him well. He’s the recognized
nuisance of the Shinbone Country. A burro can go for days without
water--they’re like a camel, Mrs. Reemy. And this old desert rat can do
it, too. He’s less than ten miles from his home. Why don’t he go there
for his water? We were here first. It’s first come first served in the
Shinbone Country, when it comes to water.”
“Ten miles is a long trip when one hasn’t had a drink in about seven
hours,” said Charmian. Then she wheeled upon the comical figure that
had followed the burro into camp.
“Your burro shall have all the water she needs,” she promised him. “And
you may fill up your bags, if you have any. I’m Mrs. Charmian Reemy, of
San Francisco, and this lady is my companion, Miss Mary Temple. These
two gentlemen are Doctor Shonto and Mr. Jerome, of Los Angeles. You
know the others, it seems. We’re here to investigate their opal claims.”
The man was tall, and his bronzed face was covered with ragged brown
whiskers. His eyes were large and blue and innocent-looking. His
clothes were far too large for him, enormous though his body was.
Quaintness stood out all over him.
“I’m reg’lar glad to meet ye, ma’am,” he grinned, bowing profoundly.
“And, lady”--he made another impressive bow to Mary--“the same to you.”
He turned to Dr. Shonto and Andy. “Gentle-_men_,” he said, and bent
nearly double again. “I am Shirttail Henry. They call me Shirttail
because I live at Shirttail Bend, which is a hairpin curve in th’ trail
that leads from these here buttes here to the meadows up on top o’ the
mountains. My right name’s Henry Richkirk, an’ I ain’t a nuisance in
these parts, if I do say it myself. But I could name some that are,
though I wouldn’t. You,” he continued, swinging back toward Charmian
as if the wind had caught his fluttery garments and whisked him about,
“are a gorgeous pretty girl, an’ seein’ ye stood up for Lot’s Wife,
I guess ye’re perfect. If ye wanta make Shirttail Henry your friend,
stand up f’r Lot’s Wife. Ye done it, an’ I’ll tell ye somethin’ about
opals before ye go any furder. Shirttail Henry knows th’ stones that’ve
caught the colours o’ the rainbow. An’ he knows how they get them
colours. Ye stood up f’r Lot’s Wife, an’ Shirttail Henry’s gonta stand
up f’r you. Nuisance, eh! Well--”
But here Smith Morley and Omar Leach leaped upon the man, and together
they bore him, fighting, to the ground.
“He’s crazy, Mrs. Reemy,” puffed Leach, struggling to keep the big man
on his back. “Crazy as a roadrunner. Dangerous, too! He’s lived in this
country all alone too long--and he’s--”
At this point Dr. Inman Shonto and Andy Jerome took a hand in the rough
proceedings.